


Manalainen

by rohkeutta



Series: Mesmeria [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loss of Identity, M/M, Prequel, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 00:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7779346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohkeutta/pseuds/rohkeutta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If you get hurt, hurt them back,</i> he thinks as he steels himself for another leap towards the next building, recalling Steve’s orders to another set of Marines on Project Oneiros. It feels like a lifetime ago. <i>If you get killed, walk it off.</i></p><p><i>I’m fucking walking it off, alright.</i> </p><p>Sort-of-prequel to Mesmeria.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manalainen

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically what I vomited to google docs at midnight when I was supposed to go to bed. Sorry in advance.
> 
> Manalainen is a word in meänkieli, a dialect of Finnish spoken mainly in Tornionjoki valley in northern Finland. It literally means "the one from beneath the ground", but is used to mean a ghost or the spirit of a dead person. It's - naturally, when it comes to this series - also a song by CMX.
> 
> Set four years before Mesmeria.
> 
> As always, I'm eternally grateful to my incredible beta sneaqui for awesome job!

He’s running.

He doesn’t know how he got out; maybe they let him escape. He’s skilled, sure, but there’s no other way to explain why the base’s corridors are so empty, why there are no alarms blazing as he skitters down the hallways and out into the street.

He’s in a faceless, nameless city, and that’s enough to tell him he’s dreaming. He extends his right hand in front of him, watches it turn into a woman’s hand - smooth and slender, fingers covered with clunky, fashionable rings.

He can still forge, but he must be several layers deep - he remembers hazily other interrogation rooms, other PASIVs, endless questions about him and dreamsharing and Steve.

 _Steve_ , he thinks, panic flaring up in his chest, bright and violent. _They can’t have him. Those fuckers can pull out my molars, and they still won’t have him._

The dog tags around his neck are jumping, clinking against his shirt. He knows that if he paused to check them, there would be one letter too little, one number wrong, a familiar groove missing.

It’s almost eerily quiet, just his shoes hitting the pavement, a steady, rapid thudding. Here, without Steve’s sharp eyes and inevitable questions, he runs as fast as he can, not holding back; the buildings on either side of the street are blurring together in his periphery.

He rounds a corner, and a spray of machine gun bullets strikes the street just a few feet from him. He curses, spitting out a string of meaningless profanities in a mess of languages, and ducks back behind the corner again. Fuckers.

A car slowly approaches the direction he came. It’s black, unmarked, and Bucky almost laughs, a tad hysteric. Trust the bad guys to always find the most cliche way to do everything.

He eyes the building next to him. It’s five stories high, an old red brick one with lots of good handholds, and there’s a ladder to a fire escape several feet above him.

Another car turns toward him from the other direction, and he swears again, cornered, and starts to scale the building. His left arm isn’t working properly, and his whole body’s screaming with agony; he’s pretty sure that up top he’s more wound than man. But he’s always been good at ignoring physical pain, and muscle memory does its magic. He manages to reach the ladder, and then he’s running again, up the fire escape to the roof.

The next building isn’t far, and he speeds up, gets his foot on the low wall surrounding the rooftop terrace and jumps, landing with a smooth roll. The pain in his torso and legs shoots through him, and he gasps, breathless and slightly dizzy, before pushing it away.

He remembers the explosion, dimly, and for a long second he even wonders if he’s alive, anymore. Maybe this is just some bizarre, twisted afterlife. Then, his left shoulder throbs, and yeah, there’s no way he’s dead when everything sucks this fucking much.

 _If you get hurt, hurt them back,_ he thinks as he steels himself for another leap towards the next building, recalling Steve’s orders to another set of Marines on Project Oneiros. It feels like a lifetime ago. _If you get killed, walk it off._

_I’m fucking walking it off, alright._

When he gets on the next roof, he collapses behind a chimney and draws a shaky breath. It’s very clear that the guys who’ve gotten to him - the same people who blew up the veterinary clinic, no doubt - want information. It would be so easy to just give up, give them anything they want, and embrace the mercy of death.

But Bucky’s grown up keeping secrets, his own and other people’s, and he’ll be damned if those fuckers will get anything out of him. Special Forces didn’t train him to be a fucking coward. His ma didn’t raise him to be a back-stabbing quitter. Steve didn’t fall in love with a fool.

He’s probably too sedated to wake up if he kills himself, but…

Somewhere behind him he can hear the rattle of the fire escape he used to get to the roof. His breath hitches as he swallows back a slightly terrified sob. There’s always another option.

He closes his eyes, and dreams up a gun.

\----

Bucky wakes up on a street. It’s the only thing around him: a couple of yards of pavement, surrounded by the fog of unbuilt dreamspace.

“Jesus,” he says out loud because, shit, the theory wasn’t wrong: Limbo exists. His deepest subconscious is just a strip of street and a tabula rasa.

 _I need to hide_ , he thinks. _As quickly as possible. Come on, you goddamned lump of a brain, make something happen._

He starts running again, into the fog. The landscape forms around him as he flees: old buildings in muted colours, tram tracks on the tree-lined streets, little shops, advertisements on bus stops in a familiar language.

A city rises around him, and Bucky laughs, his chuckle turning into a hysteric sob when he recognizes his surroundings. He turns a corner, then another, and darts down Mannerheimintie.

He passes a familiar, yellow building, and his skin burns with the memory of Steve’s kisses.

 _Hi, Helsinki, old friend,_ he thinks, bursting from the street into the park, vaulting over the bench that appears in front of him. _I was always happy living in you. Save me now._

He throws in something from Brooklyn, puts in the Silver Pagoda from Phnom Penh, raises Tokyo Tower and clusters of cherry trees, just to confuse whoever will be following him down.

The sky is grey as he passes the Sibelius monument, following the gravel path downhill towards the sea that has just emerged from the fog.

Cafe Regatta looks gloomy, the red colour somehow dimmer, as Bucky trips inside, crashes behind the counter. His heart is beating madly, but for now he feels safe, comforted by the familiar surroundings.

 _Here_ , he thinks. _Here._

He draws a breath, gulping air like he’s drowning. After a couple of deep breaths, he drags himself back up and pries open the till of the old-fashioned cash machine.

It’s good that he knows himself so well; knows every dark pit and corner of his own mind, knows the ugly and the good, the things that make him James Barnes. It will help him now.

Bucky closes his eyes and dreams up a collection of seemingly meaningless things. _Paper,_ he thinks, _easy to fold, easy to overlook._

Germany. The thrill of every hand-written letter he got from Steve. Bucky was twenty, head over heels in love with a man he was convinced didn’t love him back. A couple of short months later he’d been back in the desert again, his hands remembering the feeling of killing.

He thought he would come home from that tour in a flag-covered casket. He’d returned to dreamsharing - and Steve, ridiculous and insane and finally so fucking healthy that Bucky couldn’t resent him and his foolishness for long.

Cambodia. A beautiful suit. Steve’s kisses down his chest. Angkor. Linking arms at the Old Market, because in Siem Reap nobody looked twice at two men walking arm-in-arm on the streets. A long-hoped for _I love you_ , blurted out in a roadside parking lot.

Helsinki--

Helsinki. He doesn’t want to think about it.

God, he’d been so happy. It feels so distant, now - merely a week ago in the real world.

He holds the items in his hands - a scrap of sketching paper, a crumpled bill, a tram ticket - and gathers himself together, folds James Buchanan Barnes away, into every crease of paper. 29 years’ worth of history, folded and folded and folded, like an origami crane.

When he puts the papers down inside the cashier, he’s almost done.

Something changes in the air around him, and he knows that the bad guys have dropped into Limbo with him. He has to hurry.

He yanks the dog tags off his neck, squeezing them in his fist for a second. His eyes feel hot with unshed tears, and he presses his lips against his trembling hand.

_I love you. I love you I love you I love you. You love me. You love me. You--_

He chokes out a sob. _I’m sorry, Steve. They can have me now. But not you; they’ll never take you. Please, forgive me._

Bucky opens his fist, kisses the tags, and drops them in the till. He’s crying now, wiping off tears and snot with his sleeve. This far down the pain feels dull, licking down his torso and legs. He pushes the till closed gently.

_God, I hope I’ll see you again._

\----

When he locks the door of the shack behind him, the city in front of him is strange and foreign.

 _Somebody loved me once_ , he thinks distantly as he sets off running again, this time without a direction. _Somebody loved me. Maybe here. Maybe somewhere else. Remember that. That’s important._

By the time they catch up to him, he’s far away from the red shack. They shoot him in the knee, and he goes down, collapsing on the tram tracks. He hits his head, and everything goes dizzy and unfocused. His body’s aching: a constant, dull throb, and his knee feels like it’s on fire.

Footsteps thunder down the street towards him, and he knows the game’s over. The pavement and the steel of the tram tracks are cool under his cheek. Above him, the lush, green branches of the trees sway in the wind. It’s comforting; one last second of peace.

 _I’m ready,_ he thinks dimly, closing his eyes and letting the dark come. _Somebody loved me once. I’m ready._

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is [here](http://rohkeutta.tumblr.com), if you wish to moan about Bucky Barnes, talk about obscure Finnish bands, or just holler at me.


End file.
